


Spacial Awareness

by feistymuffin



Category: JackSepticEye (YouTube RPF), Markiplier (YouTube RPF), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alien Sex, Alternate Universe, M/M, Sexual Content, Slavery, Space AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-13 21:41:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11768952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feistymuffin/pseuds/feistymuffin
Summary: It's not often that Mark finds himself conflicted in his job. One day something completely new comes across his path, and it offers him a moral choice that will define him like nothing else.





	Spacial Awareness

**Author's Note:**

> This is an unofficial gift for AdorabloodthirstyKitty, who constantly puts up with my haranguing them about every weird thing I'm writing. (This one is totally their fault, though, they mentioned aliens in front of me and here we are.)
> 
> :3c Enjoy, guys

“Fischbach, bring that one over here!” the foreman calls to him across the small hangar and Mark redirects himself, moving the cage on his pallet jack to where his boss stands.

“This one is special,” Angus says, gesturing to the darkened glass of the cage when Mark is beside him, reading from the data pad in his hands. “Worth a hell of a lot. Be gentle when you set it up for sale.”

It’s a big cage, for sure, and Mark’s wary of what creature could be inside, waiting to be sold to the highest bidder as a luxury pet. It wouldn’t be the first time his boss got something more than he could handle.

“This one’s pretty big,” Mark fishes, eyeing his boss. “Is it another juurlin?”

Angus laughs, booming and loud. “Oh, hell no, I learned from that one.” In emphasis he rubs at his neck, where Mark can still see the healing gash caused by one of the juurlin’s tusks. “This one is all the way from the top. It’s, uh… Actually, I don’t know what it is. I was told I was supposed to be discrete and that it’s ridiculously valuable, which I guess means that anyone below the head honcho and its handlers don’t get to know what it actually is. Even the shipping report doesn’t have much.”

As primary handler, Mark doesn’t relish the idea of putting himself in charge of an unknown species. “I cant even have physicality specs, or a description?”

“I know it’s not exactly ideal,” Angus sighs, running a hand over his long salt-and-pepper hair, tied back in a lengthy ponytail. “But nobody’s quite the handler that you are. You’ll sort it out just fine.” Angus looks on the data pad in his hand, swiping through the manifest for the cage and its organism. “Oh, yeesh, lots of preparation for its habitat. Better let the crews know beforehand.”

“What do I do with it in the meantime?” Mark asks. “If it’s high priority. Anything extra I should do, or is a holding tank acceptable?”

Angus pokes around on the data pad some more before shrugging. “Doesn’t say anything about special circumstances on here. Says it’s an adaptive species, and will correct its body chemistry to its environment, but for the sake of sales they want it in its natural state. It’s, quote, “the most profitable scenario”.”

Mark shakes his head and runs his fingers through his dark hair—too long, he should’ve had it cut ages ago. “Sometimes I don’t like this job, Angus.”

“You and me both, Fischbach,” Angus sighs, and nods his head towards the holding cells. “This one’s the last of the day, so make sure it’s comfortable before you head home. Everyone else on deck is already clocked out.”

“Late night again,” Mark sighs, and punches Angus’ shoulder when he laughs. “Such sympathy.”

“I’m oozing it, aren’t I?” Angus says cheekily. He walks towards his office at the end of the hangar, waving as he goes. “Lock up after you’re done, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Mark assures him, and Angus disappears into his office. Mark lines up the cage against the largest holding cell, a twenty-by-twenty foot reinforced steel cube with two windows of triple-fortified glass. He locks the cage into place before, one by one, undoing the interior restraints of the thing inside, unlocking magnetic fields designed to keep the creature from hurting itself and from moving. Once Mark’s got the cage emptied he shuts the holding cell again and puts the empty cage back in the sanitation bay to be cleaned before reuse. 

“Alright, let’s see what we’re dealing with, here,” Mark murmurs, and using the control pad to the far right of the holding cell’s front wall he dims the opacity of the cell windows until they show its contents.

Sitting in the far corner, curled up tightly with its face turned into the crevasse is a humanoid, barely clothed in a pair of men’s underwear and a white t-shirt. Its skin is a pale green, and as Mark studies it with wide, horrified eyes he can’t decide if it’s closer to sea foam or mint. In place of human ears it has oblong ones, shaped like a horse’s but floppier, on the sides of its head as opposed to the top. From one of the leg holes of its pants—if they can be called such—begins a long tail, slowly furring more and more until the tip of it is completely covered in pale, soft-looking hair. Sprouting from its back is a pair of wings, leathery and bony like a dragon’s with an apex claw at the top joint, and covered in the same pale fur as the tail. The hair on its head, short on the sides and long on top, is a dark green, contrasting nicely against its skin and the light shade of its fur.

It’s a beautiful creature, for sure, and from what Mark knows about the zoological trade in this star sector it would cost a small fortune to buy, and that’s not even at a competitive auction. A quick glance at the minimal paperwork confirms that the base price for the creature is over thirty million credits. But that’s not the problem, because as he dims the walls too and lets light inside the cell the creature lifts its head and turns a human-esque face around to look at him. Big, watery, _intelligent_ blue eyes accuse him of everything he’s guilty of in this job, and the feline nose that replaces where a human one might be—if it was human, which it clearly isn’t— twitches as it sniffs. 

“You’re sentient,” Mark whispers, hand frozen on the cell dimmer, and watches its ears lift, perking towards Mark’s voice. “Oh my god, you’re—you’re intelligent. You’re not—”

“That hasn’t mattered before,” the creature says. Its voice is masculine in tone, higher than average in pitch and with an ethereal, soothing echo on the words that hints to things like birdsong and leisurely walks in the rain. 

“Oh my god,” Mark says, aghast, and brings his hands away from the pad. “What—How—”

“The laws here are as flexible as anywhere else, where money is concerned,” it says, bitter and cutting. It studies him, dewy eyes harsh. “Well, what are you waitin’ for? Don’t you have a job to do, Mr. Handler? Handle me.”

“No—no, I can’t, you’re—you’re not a pet, this is ridiculous,” Mark says, and he backs up until he hits the far wall. It’s mere feet from the cell, but the space is necessary to put into perspective how suddenly his morals have been violated. 

Slowly the creature stands, and at its full height it’s Mark’s size. Its hands and feet are humanoid, its fingers longer than normal and all of its features more elongated and elegant than any human Mark’s ever seen. It comes to the glass at the front of the cell and looks out at Mark. “You aren’t like the others.”

“I don’t know if that’s true,” Mark says, because now he’s second-guessing every organism he’s put through here, every poor creature he’s helped put up for sale to the rich and famous of the cosmos. “I don’t know if that’s true at all.”

“It is,” the alien says. “You feel remorse. No one else would, not in this place.”

“For Christ’s sake, you’re a person, of course I feel remorse!” Mark yelps. It blinks at him, unmoving. “What—Shit, what am I going to do? I can’t do anything even close to setting you up for sale. I…” He looks into the creature’s eyes again, feels a hard stab of guilt in his gut that spirals down into his feet and drags all his organs down with it. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for what’s happened to you.”

It’s a long moment of silence between them, both of them staring at the other, and then the creature asks, “What’s your name?” 

“Mark,” he chokes out. He runs both hands through his hair, exhaling hard through pursed lips. “I’m… I’m Mark.”

“My friends call me Jack,” the alien murmurs, and flattens a slender hand on the glass pane. “Though, it’s been some time since I’ve seen them.”

“Do you have a gender?” Mark asks, then winces. “I’m sorry if that’s rude, I just—”

“I’m male,” Jack says, and laughs a little. The nearly-magical lilt in his voice becomes hypnotic when he laughs, the sound crescendoing melodically, and when his lips part Mark spots a set of short fangs, two on top and two on bottom. 

Sighing, Mark nods and dials Angus’ number on his phone. He picks up right away. “Hey, kiddo. Having issues with the alien? It doesn’t say it’s hostile, but you never know—”

“It’s sentient,” Mark blurts, angry and spitting, and lets everything pour out. “The fucking alien is sentient. It—he’s cognitive, he speaks, he’s a _person_ , Angus—”

“Whoa, shit, it’s sentient?” Angus parrots, surprised. “You’re sure?”

“I’m having a conversation with him, so yes, I’m sure,” Mark snaps, and eyes Jack again. The alien stands patiently, his curious and somehow hungry eyes on Mark and his hand still on the glass. 

“Shit,” Angus sighs, and cold apprehension curls into Mark’s gut. It’s not the sigh of someone who’s about to break rules to save a life. It’s the sigh of someone who’s about to ruin a life for the sake of his job. “Mark, I know this isn’t orthodox, but we still have a job to do. The contract with the seller—”

“They’re slavers, Angus,” Mark rages. “They kidnapped him. He’s sentient! He is sentient! That’s illegal!”

“And we’re outside of jurisdiction of the Federation because we orbit Descadas, and everyone knows that,” Angus replies, voice stern and hard. “Now do your job. I’m leaving for the night, and that thing had better be fully set and secured when I come in tomorrow morning.” Angus hangs up and the noise is a sharp, final click in Mark’s ear.

He lifts a gaze filled with dread to Jack, who looks back with far too much age behind those blue eyes. “You have a job to do, Mark. Don’t you?” His voice is tired, accepting and ancient.

Mark looks at him and he feels ancient too as he watches his life crumble before his eyes. He can’t go through with something like this. He can’t put someone into slavery by his hand. He _can’t_ perpetuate this disgusting cycle. “Stand back.”

Wordlessly Jack backs up, tail slipping noiselessly along, wingtips grazing the floor. Mark keys in the code to unlock the cell and as the front wall slides open he resets it manually to show readings for a life form inside, similar to Jack’s dimensions. With the doors gaping wide, Mark gestures to a shellshocked Jack to follow. 

“Quickly, come on, I’m getting you out of here,” Mark urges, approaching him.

Jack stares at him. “You’re—you’ll lose your job,” he begins.

“With a job like this, I’m glad to lose it,” Mark growls, and takes another step until he’s right next to the alien. He holds out a hand.

Big blue eyes lower to his waiting palm. “I… You’ll be hunted. You’ll be stealin’, and heftily at that.”

“I’ll figure that out after I get you out of here,” Mark says, determined despite having no idea how he’s going to outrun these people. People who associate with slavers regularly, who go about illegal business as if it’s just as simple as getting a cup of coffee. “What’s your home planet?”

“Ylteras, in the Andromeda sector,” Jack says after a moment. “Are you sure about this?”

“I’m not leaving you to be sold to someone as a novelty or a pet, or worse,” Mark says firmly. 

The alien is silent as he studies Mark head to toe, analytical and searching. Something yearning crosses over his face, and then Jack’s hand takes hold of his.

Frisson travels through Mark’s hand, up his arm and all the way to his heart where it bursts like fireworks. He gasps and blinks, and Jack murmurs softly, “Sorry. Sometimes when people touch me it’s… intense.”

Mark nods numbly, waiting for the feeling to subside before quickly pulling Jack along behind him. He keys in the code to close the cell and darken its walls, then heads to the personal docking area where his ship is parked. As they run he laments the fact that he can’t hack into the computers from here and dead-eye the cameras before they run for it. 

At the docking area Mark points out his ship and says, “Get in, quickly,” and runs to his locker at the other end of the bay. He empties it of everything, stuffing it all into his bag and then runs back to his ship. Quickly tapping at the pad by his ship he releases the park locks once Jack is securely inside, and for extra measure he sets a station-wide lockdown in effect using his executive personnel code, which will take hours to correct. With nothing left to do to smooth their escape he gets in and goes directly to the cockpit and straps himself in, and Jack comes up behind him and sits in the copilot seat, his hand brushing Mark’s leg and sending sparks up his entire right side. 

“I don’t want to be alone,” Jack says, his voice soft but steady, when Mark gives him a questioning look. 

Mark nods and smiles a little, relieved when Jack smiles back. “Hold on,” he says, and guns it out of the docking bay just as the sirens for the lockdown start to wail.

*

Jack passes out almost instantly once they’re out of Descadas’ orbit, before Mark can even offer to give him some new clothes from his own closet. He lives on his ship when he’s not working, and there’s a round bed in the lowest section of the ship that he would prefer Jack sleep on. He doesn’t know how long it’s been since the guy’s slept on a real bed.

Once the autopilot is engaged and he’s set a course for Ylteras he goes down the ladder to the living quarters and starts making food. He doesn’t know what Jack can eat or how hungry he is, so he makes some of everything—pretty much the entirety of his fridge, he acknowledges, looking at the bare contents of it once he’s finished. 

Sometime later he hears movement above him and Jack drops down from the cockpit, landing gracefully on the balls of his feet and foregoing the ladder entirely. Wings rustling along his back, Jack eyes the spread of food and then glances over at Mark sitting at the other end of the ship in an armchair reading a book. 

Mark smiles when Jack slowly approaches. “I wasn’t sure what you liked. Dig in.”

“I am pretty hungry,” Jack admits with a small smile. He grabs the plate and utensils Mark set out for him and he fills his plate, piling it high with food. Surprisingly he sits next to Mark, placing the plate in his lap and eating quickly but not grotesquely. His wings rest over the back of the chair, fully extended and stretching almost twelve feet across, following the curves of the ship walls since it’s hardly big enough for Jack to actually stretch out. They move occasionally, brushing against Mark’s shoulders and assuaging him with rippled tingling along his chest and down his back.

After a moment of watching Jack he realizes what he’s doing and turns back to his book, ears hot. He tries to focus, he honestly does, but with Jack’s wings touching him and his tail thumping happily against the metallic floor of the ship as he eats, it’s too enthralling to look away. He hears the taps like a gong in his mind, thrumming in him. The more he eats, the more the alien is emanating a sense of ease that Mark’s sure Jack hasn’t felt in a long time.

When he’s done, completely cleaning his plate, Jack brings his dishes to the sink and starts washing them. Mark jumps to his feet and comes to him, gently ushering him to the side. When his palm rests on Jack’s minty skin he feels the soft jolt again, blooming down his body. 

“I can do that, it’s alright,” Mark says, swallowing past the tightness of his throat when Jack looks at him with piercingly blue eyes. “You should get some more rest. I have a bed, just through there.” He points, and Jack turns to look at the curtain separating the bed from the small living area. “And I have some clothes if you’d like to change, and even a shower if you want.”

“I’d like a shower, and some clothes,” Jack murmurs, looking at him in such a curious, unhurried way that Mark has to avert his eyes. 

“Of course. Just in here is the shower,” Mark says, moving around him and gesturing to a small room holding a toilet and a shower by the curtain to the bed. “And my clothes are in drawers around the bed. Pick whatever you want. Towels are right here.” He points to a cupboard next to the ladder up to the cockpit. “And, uh, I’ll be upstairs.” 

He flees after grabbing his book, and soon after he settles into the pilot’s chair with his book he hears the shower turn on. The water tank on his ship is modestly sized, but he fills it himself every time he docks so it’s always full. He likes to think it’s because he’s forever optimistic about having some amorous company, but really he’s just a “be prepared” kind of guy.

He’s read twenty-nine pages when Jack climbs up the ladder, smelling like Mark’s body wash and shampoo and wearing a pair of shorts and no shirt. Mark balks and can’t help but look at Jack’s chest and stomach, focusing for a long moment on his dark green nipples and feeling something stir in him when his eyes jerk up and Jack is staring back.

“I didn’t want to rip holes in your shirt to make my wings fit,” Jack murmurs, and his wings stretch out a bit in either direction before settling again. “Didn’t seem very nice to do without at least askin’ first.”

“That—that’s fine,” Mark stumbles over the simple words. “Uh, I’ve got some—hold on, I’ll find you something.” He edges past Jack, shivering when his wing brushes his arm and sends warm fuzzies cartwheeling through him, and heads back down to his bedroom.

Jack is right behind him when he turns around from a drawer, black t-shirt in hand. Mark jumps and backs up against the wall, but it provides no extra space between them. “I, uh, I found something you can put holes in.”

“Thank you,” Jack says, taking it when Mark holds it out, but he doesn’t move away. Mark swallows and is about to ask him what’s wrong when Jack murmurs, “I mean it. Thank you, for savin’ me, for feedin’ me, for… for all of this. You didn’t have to risk your life for mine. You could’ve just turned away and done your job, but you didn’t. So thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Mark replies quietly, and he doesn’t look away when Jack meets his gaze again. “You… you really made me question my choices, too, so I’ll have to thank you for that. You got me out of a morally compromising situation.”

“You got me out of a life-threatenin’ one,” Jack whispers. His lips tremble just slightly and he presses them together to try and quell their shaking. “And you’re takin’ me home, and you haven’t asked for anythin’ in return… Thank you, Mark.”

Mark shrugs and his face burns as he looks away, embarrassed but flattered. “I don’t figure it’s a nice thing to do, asking a guy who was enslaved for some kind of payment. Payment I don’t want in the first place.”

Jack lifts a hand and rests it on Mark’s bicep, and the touch predictably sends a wave of sensation over him. Mark glances back at him when Jack doesn’t speak or look at him. “What is it, Jack?”

“I… I hate to ask more of you when you’ve already done so much,” Jack sighs, and he takes a step back and lets his hand fall. 

Mark snags it in his, holding on with a firm grip even when his hand tingles warmly. Jack looks up with mild alarm but Mark doesn’t let go. “Tell me, please. I want to help.” Still Jack doesn’t reply, looking down at his feet resolutely, but his fingers in Mark’s are sweaty, arhythmically twitching, idly touching the skin of Mark’s larger hand. His wings shuffle minutely, restlessly, and the tip of his tail on the floor is rabbiting back and forth like a metronome on speed.

Hesitantly Mark lifts his other hand and smooths it over Jack’s bare shoulder. Instantly Mark is assaulted with the tingling throughout his body, situated in his hands mostly, and Jack leans hard into his touch. Mark nudges his shoulder lightly until the escapee looks up at him. 

“My race is tactile,” Jack explains in a murmur. “We thrive off of touch, but not just sexual—although there’s that, too. We have… we have energies, and each one of us is different, and we interact with each others’ energies and other organisms and objects mostly through touch. It’s like tasting someone’s soul through your skin. Most Ersti are like me, they go through life with the average amount of familial affection and touchin', friends and lovers give and get a little more. But… when I was taken, it all stopped. It all just ended. Nobody touched me anymore, and if they did I didn’t want them to, even if it was like rain in a drought.”

With clarity Mark remembers Jack’s hand flat on the pane of glass in his cell, unmoving, begging for something that Mark couldn’t place. How Jack goes out of his way to gently touch Mark, even if just in passing. The way he lingers so close, almost like he’s waiting for someone to initiate something more.

“Do you want a hug?” Mark asks him softly, and Jack nods miserably, wings twitching. Mark lets him go and lifts his arms and Jack goes to him like a magnet, arms wrapping around his chest like velcro. Mark gasps as the tingling floods over him at Jack’s touch, all along his front and dissipating on to his whole body, but after a moment the sharpness of the sensation fades and he wraps his arms around Jack’s slender body, right over his velvety soft wings. 

Slowly Jack’s head droops until his face is buried in Mark’s shoulder, his body idly trembling as Mark holds him, stroking his hands over his bare back and his wings. One of his floppy ears brushes Mark’s cheek when it twitches and he smiles a little, being careful not to hurt Jack when he pulls him just a little closer.

“This… this is enough, you can let go,” Jack mumbles, but he doesn’t move an inch from his position on Mark’s shoulder. His fingers claw into Mark’s shirt contradictorily, holding him fast to Jack’s body. 

“Ylteras is a ways off,” Mark replies easily, brushing his thumb down Jack’s spine as he feels subtle ripples of tingling. His skin is softer than the most luxurious leather and the short, fuzzy hairs covering his wings and tail are even softer. 

“If you’re sure,” Jack hedges, tensing for a moment before relaxing again when Mark spreads his hand over the small of his back. “Thank you. I really… I really did need this.”

“Stop thanking me,” Mark laughs lightly. “Seriously, I’m going to get a big head.”

His trembling worsens, and Mark’s heart drops when he realizes Jack is crying. He eases back so he can look Jack in the face and his eyes are brimming with tears, his lower lip wobbling as he avoids looking Mark in the eye. 

“I’m sorry,” Mark murmurs, and pulls him back in for another hug. He puts a hand to Jack’s hair and runs his fingers through the silky strands, bringing his other arm tightly around Jack’s waist. “I’m sorry. You’re safe now, it’s okay.”

Jack sobs quietly into his shoulder and Mark holds him, rubs small circles on his back and pets his hair. The tingling in his body reduces to a gentle hum, but there’s almost a hint of an ache to it now that wasn’t there before. Is that what Jack was talking about with his energy? Is that the tingling feeling whenever they touch? Does it feel different based on his emotions? 

Slowly the Ersti’s trembling reduces, his sobs dwindle down and then he’s still in Mark’s embrace. “When are you goin’ to stop savin’ me?” he mumbles without pulling away.

“When you don’t need saving anymore,” Mark replies, and finds that he actually means it. With his job lost and the certainty of a bounty on his head in the darker circles of the universe, Mark has nowhere to go that’s safe anymore, nowhere else to be but with Jack. His mother is back on Earth, four and a half sectors away from Descadas and well inside Federation-controlled space, but he wouldn’t involve her in this anymore than he’d involve his brother Tom. Tom is stationed as a galactic marine outside the asteroid belt surrounding the hub of most Federation politics, Primus Arkhon, and even though his military connections would help Mark wouldn’t want Tom to threaten his own career because he got himself into a compromising moral situation. While he did the right thing, it was by no means the smartest or easiest thing to do in terms of personal safety. 

“What about you?” Jack says, and lifts his head to finally look at Mark’s face. His pearly green brow is wrinkled with concern and without even second-guessing the action Mark uses the hand at Jack’s hair to smooth his thumb over the crease there. Jack jerks away with an odd, frightened look on his face and Mark blushes and lowers his hands, quickly letting Jack go. 

What’s gotten into him? Jack isn’t his to touch, period. The guy just got out of captivity, out of _slavery_. He doesn’t need some human getting handsy with him. “What about me?” Mark asks, taking a decisive step back and hitting the ladder to the cockpit. 

Jack looks small when his wings fold up completely, snugly fit along his back. “You… you have nowhere to go that they won’t find you. You stole a lot of money from them by freein’ me. You’ll never be safe again.”

It seems like Jack didn’t have the same thread of thought that Mark did, but as his saviour what was Mark expecting? Affection? Blind following? Hero worship? No, Jack is his own person and he just wants to go home, not be tailed by a brand new enemy of the galaxy’s primary slave trade. Mark’s presence just puts him in more danger. Plus, they might not care about Jack if they can get their hands on Mark, or if they can catch wind of his whereabouts. 

“I’ll manage,” is all Mark says, quieter and sadder than he means it to be. He turns before he can see Jack’s face and climbs the ladder. “You should sleep some more. You’re welcome to the bed.”

Jack doesn’t reply and Mark doesn’t say anything else. In the cockpit he sits in the pilot’s seat and checks the readings of the instruments in the panel. The ship’s trajectory is true, on course to the Andromeda sector and nearly there, the gravity and other various sensors are optimal, and the fuel levels are decent. He has enough to get them to Ylteras, but he’ll have to fuel up before he leaves. It’s valuable time that he may need to escape but Jack needs to be taken home above all else, or all of this is for nothing.

*

“Mark.”

He jolts awake and looks around, sitting up straight and turning to see Jack standing at the side of the pilot’s chair, looking down at him with a confusing expression and a hand reaching out as if to touch his arm. Before it touches him Jack pulls back though and chews his bottom lip, a white cuspid fang poking out over the flesh. 

“I must have fallen asleep,” he murmurs, rubbing his face tiredly, feeling the scratch of his beard on his palms. Belatedly he notes that the last time he slept was the day before, the morning of his last day of work. He was already into his third hour of overtime when Angus told him to stay and deal with Jack’s containment, and it had been a long day even without the extra work. In hindsight it’s not a surprise that he passed out after staying up for hours more to cook for Jack and watch over him.

“You look like you needed it,” Jack says gently, long fingers fidgeting with the end of his tail. 

Mark gives him a small smile and looks at the panel before him. “We’ve got a little way to go before we hit Ylteras yet. You hungry?”

Wordlessly Jack nods, backing up when Mark gets to his feet. As Mark passes him Jack’s wings brush over his whole back, one slow swipe of tingles that comes and goes in a sultry second. Mark shivers and forces himself to ignore the deliberateness of the action—there’s no way Jack just brushed him like that as he walked by—and leads the way back downstairs.

He heats up two plates of the leftovers from the minor feast he cooked earlier, checking his watch as he waits for the microwave to do its work. It’s been just about ten hours since Mark took Jack away from Descadas’ trading post but it feels like seconds, like he’s still running on the adrenaline of the escape. It may as well have been seconds ago because he’s no closer to knowing Jack as a person, and no farther from certain death at the hands of slavers. 

Once the food is ready he offers a plate to Jack and sits at the small table in one of the two chairs there. Jack takes the other, and as they eat his tail curls delicately around Mark’s ankle, charging him slowly from bottom to top with a steady fizzling energy. He barely tastes what he’s eating but he cleans his plate and so does Jack.

Mark starts the dishes when they both finish eating, taking Jack’s dish from him and filling the sink. There aren’t many and he’s done in minutes, drying them and putting them away. When he turns back to the table Jack isn’t there, instead wandering and browsing the large collection of books crammed into every available shelf space on the starboard wall of the ship. Helplessly Mark watches him, watches his wings flutter absentmindedly and his tail twitch and curl as he moves slowly down the wall, tilting his head this way and that to read the spines of the books. His fingers trail over the books at chest level, and he stops at a well-worn paperback copy of Jules Verne’s _Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea_. He smooths his fingertips over it slowly, his ears perking slightly and his face changing into a serene smile, and he slides the book from the shelf.

“This is your favourite, isn’t it?” Jack asks him, turning, hands running over the cover lovingly. 

Mark’s eyebrow jerk up. “Yeah, it is. How’d you know?”

“The energy on it is… blissful,” Jack murmurs, looking up at him and then back down to the book. “Wholesome.”

“You can tell that just from touching it?” Mark wonders, approaching him.

“Yes,” Jack replies, looking up again when Mark stops next to him. Gently Mark takes the book from him and opens the front cover to reveal the neatly handwritten message on its first page: _To my starbound son, whose heart reaches greater depths than the Nautilus, and whose fearlessness rivals Captain Nemo’s. Love, Dad_. 

Mark shivers when Jack’s left wing, closest to him, stretches out and grazes across his shoulders and then rests there, lightly curling around him. Jack’s eyes are down and they skim along the words before flicking back up to Mark’s face. His face turns a curious shade of forest green when he sees his wing across Mark’s shoulders and the appendage pulls back abruptly. 

“You—you loved your father very much,” Jack says through his embarrassment, his gaze on Mark’s face.

“How do you know he’s dead?” Mark murmurs, noting the past tense.

Jack shrugs, his wings rustling. “Energies stay forever on objects, at least the ones that my people can sense. The other energy aside from yours on this book is old, sad. Sick.”

“Brain cancer, too aggressive and far along to heal or operate, even if we had had the money for it,” Mark says after a moment. “This was the last thing he gave me.” He smiles a little. “He would always encourage me and my brother when we were growing up in whatever we did, and once I knew I wanted to go to space he said to me, “You can reach the stars, Mark, as long as you never stop trying”.”

“He was right,” the Ersti says, cerulean eyes fixed on Mark’s. “You can.”

_Not anymore_ , Mark thinks, but he doesn’t say it out loud. “Let’s get you home first before I start reaching for any stars.”

Jack must pick up on his shift in mood and he puts a hand on Mark’s arm, coaxing another tingling burst under his skin. “I’m sorry for what you’ve sacrificed for me,” he sighs softly. “I wish I could repay your courage.”

“You getting home safe is good enough for me,” Mark replies, swallowing at the penetrative intensity of Jack’s stare. Wrenching his eyes away, Mark turns and puts the book back in its sandwiched place on the shelf. Jack’s hand, rather than dropping from his arm, slides up his bicep and rests on his shoulder, thumb teasing at the crook of his shoulder and neck. Mark’s body echoes with tingles and he glances over at Jack.

The alien’s face is cryptic, something warm beneath the surface. “My people have many unique traits, but one of them is sensory enhancement. Our energies, as I’m sure you’ve realized when I touch you, are very physically potent. The main reason I was taken, why I’m so valuable to people as a submissive creature, is because I can make sex really, really good.”

Mark waits for the punchline—or more importantly the point of such an explanation—but nothing is forthcoming. However, studying Jack’s starving, calculating expression gives him the truth of what Jack’s saying. What he’s insinuating.

“And is that payment to you?” Mark says stonily, averting his eyes to look at the hoard of books taking up the wall. “Giving me some mind-blowing sex in exchange for freeing you, saving your life?”

“I—” Jack begins, and the nerves are blatant in his voice. “I—Mark, I didn’t mean it like that—”

“The answer is no,” Mark snaps, and shrugs off his hand. Jack recoils and Mark squashes his guilt at the action, along with every single hopeful little thought he had concerning Jack, the pipe dreams and the meagre chance at a future with him. A veritable stranger that he'd already begun to spin fairytales around. “I don’t need… compensation like that. I know you probably need it, and I’m sorry, but I can’t…” He inhales slowly, letting the breath go again just as slow. “I can’t give it to you.”

“I didn’t—” Jack tries again, miserably, hands reaching out to Mark. The human backs up out of range and turns to the ladder, foot on the bottom rung. “Mark, I’m sor—” 

“I’ll let you know when we reach Ylteras,” Mark says past the boulder in his throat, the landslide’s worth of disappointment weighing down on his chest. He quickly advances up the ladder and plops into the pilot’s seat, checking the instruments by default.

Once he verifies everything is functional he leans forward, elbows on his knees. His hands slide over his face and he smothers the bitter whimper he lets out into his palms, wishing like hell that he’d never gone to work the day before.

*

He leaves the cockpit once to use the bathroom in the next eight hours, and doesn’t bother eating since he had such a large meal before. A couple times Jack comes partway up the ladder and asks him if they can talk and every time, without even turning to look at him, Mark tells him a solitary, “No,” and ignores the gut-punch feeling he gets when Jack’s quiet and pitiful, “Okay,” comes back to him before the alien disappears downstairs again.

Mark occupies himself with piloting the ship manually and fiddling with his transceiver, loaded with game apps and fully charged, but everything he does on the small device is boring, lacklustre. Whenever he gets the errant, unwanted thought of taking Jack up on his offer he makes a comprehensive list in his head of the reasons why he shouldn’t, ignoring all the compelling reasons why he should.

When they reach Ylteras’ orbit, he calls, “Jack, come here, please.”

There’s an audible scrambling downstairs and then Jack is shooting through the opening to the level below and immediately coming right to Mark, everything about him screaming _frazzled_. “Listen, I’m so sorry, I just—”

Mark turns back to face out the glass baring their gazes to Jack’s home planet, about a third larger than Earth and covered in multiple different types of forest and several large bodies of water, as well as bustling, human-influenced cities. “What are the coordinates of your hometown?”

If Jack deflated any harder he’d be whistling. “Oh,” he says, soft and hurt. Mark bites the inside of his cheek to stop himself from getting up and scooping Jack into a huge hug. “Um, forty-seven-forty by oh-six-seventy-one.”

With a nod Mark keys in the coordinates to his planetary cartographer and follows its directions, towards the other side of the planet. Jack lingers—Mark hears him behind his left shoulder, nervously fidgeting. The whispery rustling of his wings and the swish of his tail against the floor are like daggers in Mark’s back. 

“Can—can I just explain myself?” Jack mumbles, hushed. “And then I’ll… I’ll go.”

“Go ahead,” Mark invites neutrally, flicking off the on-board gravity as they dip within Ylteras’ gravitational pull. “Sit down, and buckle up.”

Slowly, as if waiting for Mark to turn and snap at him like a wild animal, Jack eases into the copilot’s seat and buckles the harness across his chest. He’s put on Mark’s shirt since the last time Mark actually saw him, his wings poked through the dual holes he must have cut into the fabric. 

It’s a long minute before he finally turns to Mark, saying mournfully, “I never meant to… I didn’t mean that I would sleep with you as… as payment. For all of this. I meant to explain why I was sought after in the first place, not to…” He swallows, looking out the window as they lower into a cloud bank, approaching the surface. “And… you’re the first person I’ve been near that I haven’t been frightened of in almost four months, if the calendar downstairs is accurate. I’m sorry if my… my eagerness made you think I was propositionin’ you for repayment.” With a sad little sound Jack looks back down at his lap, slender fingers worrying at the buckles of the harness. “I was leanin’ towards the idea because I’m interested in you, but that’s not an excuse for how disrespectful I was by bringin’ it up like that.”

Mark sighs as he leans to adjust the slider for the ship’s reverse thrust, used for landing and taking off, and taps on a display screen giving him the locations of landing zones in the area, shown as pinging dots. He selects the nearest one with a tap and heads towards it. “I don’t pretend to understand your needs with the whole touch and energy thing, but I get why you brought it up. But don’t worry about it. You’re almost home.” _So I won’t be your last resort anymore_ , Mark adds to himself. 

Jack doesn’t say anything and Mark pilots the ship to the landing zone, parking it neatly in a space to the left of the registration building. They disembark from the ship and Mark has a few short words with the technician on site to refuel everything as well while he’s gone. He doesn’t expect to be long.

The Ersti leads the way through town, a relatively small city but still apparently big enough to have pretty much everything. Mark is mildly intrigued by the abundance of Ersti, all in different skin tones than Jack’s sea foam shade. Jack’s wings are spasming on his back as he dances on the balls of his feet ahead of Mark, probably dying for the need to fly, and Mark calls to him, “You can go. I’ll catch up.”

For a moment the alien looks torn, but then he’s back by Mark’s side with a simple, “No, I’ll stay with you.”

“Seriously, you’ve been missing for four months, your family is going to want to see you,” Mark reminds him. 

“They’ll want to see you just as badly,” Jack says firmly, and takes Mark’s hand as they walk. Mark’s skin tingles and without thinking he clasps his hand around Jack’s smaller one. The tingling gets worse. 

They walk for a few more blocks, Jack’s thumb doing cataclysmic things to his body as it brushes over his hand, and then Jack is pulling Mark along at a run as they come up to a large house with a fenced yard and shutters on the windows. 

Jack bursts through the front gate and hauls Mark to the front door, where Jack lets himself in and hollers, “Ma! Pa!” He tugs Mark along, into the good-sized foyer where a curving wooden staircase leads up to the second floor.

Silence greets them, and then there’s an almighty ruckus of furniture scraping against floors before six people, some so similar in looks that it’s undeniable that they’re related, come charging down the hall towards them.

They’re all Ersti, which isn’t surprising since Jack himself is Ersti. The eldest two, a man and a woman with a pair of expressions like they’ve seen ghosts, are in the front of the pack. The man, presumably Jack’s father, is pale yellow with light brown hair and fur, while his mother is a shade of blue with indigo hair, her skin very close to green but not quite. The remaining four Ersti, two men and two women, are shades of blue and purple, and one of them is a pale orange.

The small foyer isn’t really large enough to hold seven winged bipedal creatures and one human but they manage to fit. The noise of voices yelling for explanations and answers drown one another out until it’s all just a calamity of sound, and Jack’s family crowds around him and swarms him with questions until he’s looking lost himself. They’re all touching him, fingertips on his arms, shoulders and face, his brother behind him smoothing a hand down his wing. Then one of them turns and sees Mark and over the din comes the exclaimed, “Who’s he?”

Six pairs of eyes turn on Mark and he swallows. “Uh. Hi.”

Quickly Jack extricates himself from his family herd and goes to Mark, his wings expanding almost protectively to shield him from view. “This is Mark. He’s… the one who saved me.”

Abruptly the faces in the room lose all hostility, and then Jack is sucked into his family circle again by his brother’s hand on his arm. This time around the questions are much more organized.

“Jack, what happened? You—you’ve been _missing_ , where—” his mother begins, clearly at a loss as she cups her son’s face and looks closely at his eyes. “Where have you been?”

“And what do you mean, this human saved you?” the orange Ersti asks abruptly, one of the males. “Why were you in danger? Where were—”

“I was taken from Orskarmr four months ago,” Jack says quietly, once his father lifts a hand for silence. “They just… grabbed me, right in the street. It was dark and I was walkin’ alone back to my place from the administration centre. They had some… some cloth, and they put it over my face and I passed out. The next thing I know I’m bein’ held in a cell along with a thousand other poor souls on an illegal base on Europa. I was there for… for a long time, waitin’ for somethin’, for a lot of things, and then they moved me to Descadas’ tradin’ post to be sold.” He glances over his sister’s pale blue shoulder to look at Mark. “And then Mark found me… and he took me away. Brought me right here.”

Familiar blue eyes look out at Mark from Jack’s father’s face and the Ersti gives him a broad smile, brimming with gratitude. His mother is softly crying as she rains kisses on Jack’s face, her wings swooping around to envelop him in a big hug despite his small wails of embarrassment.

The two other women detach from the group and turn to Mark, who stiffens. Their eyes are wet, but they seem more composed than their mother. “Thank you,” the violet female Ersti says to him, coming forward and taking his hand. A small wave of sensation flows up his arm and he huffs, but it’s not nearly as intense as Jack’s touch.

“It was nothing,” Mark replies quietly, glancing at where he can see the top of Jack’s head from behind his mother’s wings. The women share a look and then the blue one is taking his hand, too, adding to the swirling tingles already inside him. 

“You have a good soul,” the blue female says, smiling. “I’m Hannah. This is Megan or Meg, and that’s Malcolm—” she points out the blue male, rubbing his mother’s back while she still cries, “—and Seamus.” She unnecessarily indicates the orange male, standing a little apart but still with dewy eyes as he studies his brother.

“Uh, thank you,” Mark murmurs. He doesn’t know how long he can stay, doesn’t know how much time he has left to run and find somewhere, anywhere that will offer him asylum from the slavers, and his nerves are amping up the longer he stands and does nothing. He doesn’t even know how to begin to find help.

Hannah frowns, looking at his face. “Why are you so stressed?”

“I—I’m not,” Mark lies, and gently pulls his hands away, wary that the women can somehow sense his emotions with their energies similar to how Jack read the energy off of his father’s book. “I’m just—I really should go, I have somewhere to be—”

At that Jack pushes his way out of the ring of family members, easing his mother aside after a quick kiss to her damp cheek. “I’m alright, everyone, I’m alright. Thanks to Mark, I’m just fine.” He comes to Mark, easing his sisters aside and ignoring their smirks, and grabs his hands with both of his. A flood of tingling washes through him. “But,” Jack sighs, glancing back at his parents, “now Mark is in trouble.”

A frisson of unease crawls up Mark’s back, and he slips his hands out of Jack’s. “No, Jack, it’s fine—”

“What do you mean?” Jack’s father asks him. “What sort of trouble?”

“He worked at the Descadas tradin’ post, and instead of putting me up for sale he stole me back from the people who… owned me,” Jack says harshly, but then calms himself a little. “And now they’ll want his head on a pike because I’m such a valuable slave to lose.”

“Are you certain?” Jack’s mother says, glancing to Mark. 

“The manifest for Jack said he was going to be sold for thirty-five million credits, starting bid,” Mark tells them, and seven sets of eyes blow open wide. “So, yes, I’m certain.”

Jack comes a little closer, mouth moued. “You never said it was that much.”

“It doesn’t matter, it’s done now,” Mark mumbles, eyeing Jack’s morose face. “There’s no price I wouldn’t have saved you for.”

“And we owe you a debt, Mark, because of your selflessness,” Jack’s father says firmly. “We can offer you shelter, a place to stay indefinitely. Here, with us.”

“I—” He’s gobsmacked, lost for words as he stares around at the family of Ersti, as he stares at Jack’s hopeful face. “I can’t guarantee they won’t find me here.”

“They will discover a difference in pace, all of us against whoever they send to claim you as opposed to one Ersti caught by surprise,” his mother says, and it’s not kind. “Quite a difference, if they dare pursue you here.”

“I can’t put you in danger,” Mark sighs, this directed at Jack. “I just saved you. I can’t threaten your safety again so soon.”

“And I can’t leave you to be hunted for the rest of your life,” Jack rebukes. His eyes become pleading, hands twitching as if to reach for him again. “Please, Mark. Let me help you. Let me save you back.”

It’s a bad idea—the worst idea. It just replaces Jack in the line of fire, something Mark had wanted to avoid at all costs. But he couldn’t say no to those eyes if he tried. “… Yeah. Okay, I’ll stay.”

Jack jitters in place, wings rustling madly, and throws himself onto Mark with a yip of joy, hugging him tightly. Mark’s instantly assaulted by his tingling energy like a blast of arduous heat, and then he’s crushing his arms around Jack, belatedly being mindful of his wings. Jack’s soft noise as Mark lays a hand at the base of his spine does something unprecedented to him, curling up his insides and wringing them out like a towel, and slowly Mark’s lowering his face to breathe in Jack’s clean, mystifying scent at his neck.

Someone clears their throat and Mark looks up, mind fogged, to see the entirety of Jack’s family watching them. Jack is trembling in his arms, but Mark knows it’s not sadness or distress. He pulls back and looks at Jack’s face, and he flushes when Jack’s eyes land on his mouth hungrily.

“Jack, why don’t you show Mark where he’ll be sleeping?” Meg muses, flipping her dark purple hair over her shoulder. “It’s a shame, it seems like you’ll have to share with Mark. The guest bedroom was converted into Dad’s office when you moved out, Jack.”

Mark balks, swallowing as he looks over Jack’s shoulder at his siblings and parents, all wearing smug smiles. _Share. A bed. With Jack._

But the Ersti is unperturbed. “Okay,” Jack says, and doesn’t look away from Mark’s face. He slowly backs up out of Mark’s arms, gently taking his hand and leading him up the staircase. “This way.”

He has no choice but to follow as Jack leads him up the stairs and down the hallway, all the way to the end and into a decent-size bedroom with a queen bed and a desk against one wall. The room and bedding are in neutral, nice shades of brown, white and grey. Once inside the room Jack shuts the door behind them and leans back against it. He eyes Mark where he stands, and Mark would be lying if he said it didn’t make his insides broil with desire.

“I’m not makin’ this up, right?” Jack asks softly, unmoving. “I’m not imaginin’ things. You like me too, right?”

“Like you can’t tell every time you touch me,” Mark snorts, laughing a little. Jack smiles, his small fangs poking out over his bottom lip, and Mark finds himself caught by the sight. “But, I think you should go out and see more people. I’m… I’m the first person you’ve touched that you didn’t have to be afraid of in a long time. You might just be latching onto me because of convenience, because I saved you.”

Jack nods minutely, and his eyes lose the depth that Mark was staring into. Now he may as well be looking at a blank wall. The alien is closing up like a flower right before his eyes. “You’re right. I’m makin’ things more than they really are.”

“I didn’t say that,” Mark says gently, and comes forward until he can take Jack’s hand. “I just want to make sure this is what you want, for good reasons and not just for sudden ones.”

“They can be sudden reasons and be good at the same time,” Jack rebuttals. His fingers grip Mark’s hard. “Please, don’t shun this just because it’s fast. Don’t shun me just because you saved me. It’s not hero worship, it’s not anythin’ but me likin’ you and wantin’ you like nobody else.”

Mark groans softly at the starvation in Jack’s expression as he stares into Mark’s eyes. “I want you, too. Too much.”

“Not enough,” Jack corrects, and lifts his arms to loop them around Mark’s neck. His slender body coalesces to Mark’s, igniting tingles all through him, and his wings expand and curve around Mark to surround them both. 

Shivering at the feeling of being consumed by Jack’s effect on him, Mark lets his palms slide up Jack’s sides and beneath his hands he feels the tremble that runs through the alien’s lithe body. Jack’s tiny moan is musical, soft in Mark’s ear and coaxing him to lower his head and press his mouth to Jack’s parted lips. 

Jack sighs contentedly and his fingers spear into Mark’s shaggy hair, but before they can even start to kiss in earnest there’s a knock on the door behind Mark. 

“Jack, Mom says to quit sucking face and come have some lunch,” comes Seamus’ voice from the other side. 

“She did not say that,” Jack accuses his brother, ears flicking with irritation.

“Not exactly, but stop sucking face and come eat,” Seamus replies, and then light footfalls down the hall signal his departure. 

With regret Mark lets Jack go, and when his wings retract and fold along his back again Mark misses their warmth as if he’s standing naked in the snow. He pecks one more kiss on Jack’s mouth, making him smile and giving Mark a small thrill when his fangs poke out, and opens the door for the Ersti to leave the room first.

Lunch is a long affair. Jack’s family insists on knowing all the details of what happened to Jack, which he relays with obvious reluctance. He had been kept properly fed and taken care of while he was captive, since he was to be sold and the better condition he was in, the better he would sell. In the four months he was in captivity Jack remembers very little, the days blurring together until he was sure he’d go mad from the monotony. He could request books and specific things for food or simple entertainment like playing cards, and get them a day or so later if they were within reason. They didn’t let him out, ever, and despite his living quarters being comfortable, a cage is a cage. 

“Why hold him so long?” Malcolm wonders to the table. “His being kept longer would just decrease their profit.”

Mark, unfortunately, knows the answer to that. “There’s a high season for buying pets,” he sighs, nudging a brussell sprout across his plate. “It’s the best time to get exotic pets because the yield from last year’s babies will be old enough to sell, and a surplus of stock comes in during a month or so period, right around this time. Waiting until now would’ve easily doubled their profit in Jack’s case.”

“And you were a part of this… enterprise,” Jack’s mother says slowly. Mark feels the judgment like an ax to his chest, but she continues, “I suppose we should be thankful. Your presence, and sudden development of a conscience, saved Jack.”

He opens his mouth to defend himself but just shuts it again without saying anything. It wouldn’t make a difference. He _had_ been involved, and had seen nothing wrong with importing and selling exotic creatures with base-level animal intelligence as pets, even when it wasn’t quite legal. It hadn’t even felt wrong, because he just considered himself an employee of a expansive, high-brow and somewhat backdoor pet store. Now, he can’t get one word out of his head to describe his old job—trafficking. 

“Mom,” Jack snaps to Mark’s left. “Seriously? You’re goin’ to be rude to the guy who stole me out of slavery at his own risk. Really?”

“I didn’t say I was unthankful,” she says evenly. “I just don’t agree with his choices before he saved you.”

“Which is reasonable,” Mark inputs to stop the angry words he sees on Jack’s tongue, in his enraged expression. “I’ll admit I’m seeing the severity of my actions, in painful hindsight.”

“The point is that he stopped,” Jack says hotly, his tail thumping with clear aggravation against the floor. “Risked his life for a stranger, and all that.”

“We get it, Jack,” Hannah muses dryly, narrow chin in her hand as she stares at the two of them across the table. 

Mark feels that stare like a probe, and he quickly gets up from his chair. “If—if I’m staying I should go secure my ship somewhere more permanent. I have it at the public docking bay right now.”

“Can you find your way back alright?” Jack’s father asks.

“Uh,” Mark says, trying to remember landmarks between here and the docking bay. There had been a strip mall, and maybe some apartment buildings? Was there a park somewhere? What kinds of trees were lining the streets? “I don’t know if I can even remember how to get there.”

Jack hops to his feet, his chair clattering back noisily. “I’ll take you.” He grabs Mark’s hand and practically hauls him from the room, right to the front door where Jack hurriedly slips on shoes and impatiently waits for Mark to do the same.

Once outside, Jack is urgent as he tugs Mark along. Mark laughs even as he feels his arm possibly being yanked from its socket. “Stars, Jack, where’s the fire?”

“I want privacy,” Jack mutters, glancing at him, his face blushing dark green. “And, your ship…It has a…”

“A bed?” Mark guesses, and Jack nods, ears flushing green too as he turns to face forward again. “Are you sure? We don’t have to—”

“I want it so badly, Mark, with you,” Jack says, nervous but determined. “Only with you.” His fingers clench hard around Mark’s and Mark squeezes back.

“Okay,” he says, and lets Jack pull him down the street.

At the docking bay Mark tells Jack to wait inside and talks to the technician, paying him for the refuelling and time spent docked, and asks for directions to the nearest public parking lot for a ship his size. It’s a little closer to Jack’s parents' house, but in the other direction, and he thanks the man before climbing aboard and sealing the hatch behind him. 

The moment he’s upright Jack is on him, hands in his dark hair like he’s been starving for the taste of him and sending tingles all through his face and neck. “Mmm,” Mark tries, but Jack swallows the words. Mark gently eases him back and says, “Hold on, I have to move the ship, and then we can… do that.”

Jack pouts but lets him go, follows him up to the cockpit and sits in the copilot’s seat, buckling up without Mark having to ask. It’s a short few minutes to the lot, Jack twitching with energy beside him, and then Mark is touching down and locking everything into stationary mode.

He flips the last switch and the engine powers down, and then Jack is clawing at his sleeve, tugging him to the ladder.

“Jack, not that I’m not ridiculously flattered,” Mark begins, descending the ladder after him, “but I get the feeling you’re really in need of this kind of attention. What’s going on?”

When Mark’s feet touch down on the lower level Jack sighs, thumbing anxiously at his forearm. “I’m… It’s been a while, even before I was captive, and… my race, when we like someone, when it’s mutual and we know we can touch them, we get a little…”

“Excited?” Mark supplies, and Jack smiles shyly. “It’s okay. I just want to know you’re not rushing yourself.”

“I’m not, I’m not,” Jack assures him, and grabs his face and kisses him. Mark moans and hauls him close, arms going under his wings and sliding a hand down to rub at the base of Jack’s tail beneath his shorts. Jack whines into his mouth and clings hard, legs lifting to circle Mark’s hips.

Mark takes his weight easily and walks blindly to his bed. When he feels the curtain brush against his outstretched hand he shoves it aside and crawls forward onto the bed behind it, letting Jack go to fall onto his back, wings spread out so as not to be squished, but not fully extended. 

With Jack below him, looking eager and sexy with his shirt— _Mark’s_ shirt—riding up his stomach and baring the pale skin there, Mark aches for the tingling he associates so much with the man before him. But something makes him pause before he reaches for Jack.

“I hate to even have to ask this,” Mark murmurs, sighing through his embarrassment.

Jack looks up at him with big eyes, hands stroking over Mark’s thighs. “What is it?”

“What—” Mark laughs at himself, pressing a hand to his red face and blurting, “I’m so sorry, what exactly am I dealing with, physiologically?”

Jack’s laugh is surprised and uncontained. His hands slide up Mark’s stomach, pushing his shirt up as they go, and Mark obligingly lifts his arms as Jack sits up to remove the garment. “My parts are pretty straightforward,” Jack muses, curling a hand at Mark’s jaw and kissing him soundly.

“You say that,” Mark murmurs to his lips as his body slowly tingles with a steady buzz, “but the only parts I’ve seen are my own species’. Everything else is uncharted territory.”

“I think you’re overthinkin’ it,” Jack chuckles, and takes a minutes to scramble out of his own shirt. Mark hears the tear of fabric and doesn’t mourn the loss of the shirt one bit, since what it was hiding is much better. Jack lies back once his chest is bare, wings fanning out again, and toys his fingertips at Mark’s waistband. “Why don’t you just take these off, and we’ll see where it goes?”

Mark swallows at the fervour in Jack’s eyes and hurries to unfasten his pants, shoving them down his thighs and squirming out of them. When he looks up Jack is doing the same, shedding Mark’s shorts, but he’s not wearing anything beneath them. Mark stares as Jack kicks the shorts off his legs, his long legs a path of uninterrupted mint skin that Mark wants his teeth on. His eyes travel up Jack’s legs and thighs to the fork of his legs, and at first glance it’s not too dissimilar from Mark’s own setup, but as Jack shifts on the bed his legs part and Mark moans.

“You’ve got both,” Mark wheezes, feeling his heartbeat pick up dangerously. 

Jack looks up, face flushed but eager. “My species is… flexible,” Jack explains. “We haven’t been sexually dichotomized in our history like humans have been. Men and women are equal, and the sexes and an individual’s sexuality are interchangeable. Women can get women pregnant as well as men. We all have the same physiological parts, but only women actually ovulate to carry young.”

Mark’s eyes haven’t left Jack groin as he absorbs the words. The shape of Jack’s cock—can he call it that when it’s not actually a human body part? What’s the Ersti term equivalent?—is long and nearly cylindrical, not unlike Mark, but there the similarities end. Its tip isn’t rounded but pointed like a tentacle, and as Mark watches it moves slightly on its own like a plant waving in the breeze. Jack has no testicles below his shaft, and in their stead is what Mark would call a vagina, but it’s not quite that either. The pale folds of flesh covering Jack’s orifice are already wet with a green-tinted clear liquid, and Mark inches forward.

“Are—Is this okay?” Jack asks, and Mark can hear the nerves in his voice plain as day. 

With a bit of effort Mark makes himself look up to meet Jack’s eyes. “This is more than okay.” He notes the difference in size between his cock and Jack’s—Jack’s is longer, more slender as it tapers to its softly rounded point, and Mark knows his own girth is larger, uniform from tip to base. He eyes Jack’s groin again with worry. “But, I won’t—I won’t hurt you, right? I’m a lot bigger than you.”

Jack shakes his head, ears flopping, and reaches for Mark. “I’ll be fine.”

Mark goes to him, crawling over him and lowering to press kisses all up his chest. When he reaches Jack’s mouth he bends and kisses him softly and Jack’s arms come up around his neck, his body rolling up to rub against him. He smells the musky, sweaty, sweet scent of Jack’s arousal and stiffens, pushing the Ersti down into the mattress with his body.

At Jack’s soft sound Mark lifts off at once, but Jack coaxes him back down with his hands and a murmured, “No, I liked it,” and captures his mouth again. While they kiss Mark shimmies out of his underwear, kicking them somewhere behind him, and then there’s nothing else separating them. 

When Mark lowers his body to rest against him again Jack gasps at the contact, his legs spreading wide and twining around Mark’s. Mark moves his hips and feels the slickness of Jack, feels the subtle writhe of his tentacle-like cock against his and he groans when the tingling only makes it all a whole lot better.

“Do we need to be safe?” Mark asks, before he completely loses all reason, even though it’s already a little late. “Can I get you sick?”

“No,” Jack moans, his hips bucking up and sliding against Mark’s shaft. “No, I can’t—I don’t get sick, Ersti have auto-correctin' immune systems—”

“That is the best news I’ve ever heard in my life,” Mark sighs roughly, his breath uneven as he starts a rhythmic slide against Jack’s groin. The wetness between Jack’s legs smooths the friction into nothing, and Mark finds himself pushing down with each movement to compensate.

Jack’s arms cling tightly around Mark’s neck and he drags Mark back into a kiss, this one involving a lot more tongue. He’s wary of Jack’s fangs but he finds that after figuring out with his tongue where they sit it’s not terribly hard to navigate around them, and soon he’s got a hand in Jack’s hair to manoeuvre him where he wants.

Mark’s hips stutter as Jack’s hands roam down his back and over his ass, the alien moving to suck a small hickey onto his neck with just a hint of nipping fangs, and for a brief instant his cock slips past Jack’s folds and grazes against his orifice. Jack bucks hard and gasps into his neck, nails biting into Mark’s hips, and he jerks forward and feels himself slip just inside.

“Fuck,” Mark groans, trembling as the tingling crashes through him, and quickly pulls back. “Did I hurt you?”

“No—Stars, no, it didn’t hurt, do that again,” Jack begs, hands scrambling against Mark’s back, urging him on. 

Obediently Mark moves until he’s pressing against Jack’s hole again and slowly he eases his hips forward a little before retracting and doing it again, just as slow. The glide is smooth although very tight, but Jack’s body stretches easily to accept him. Jack makes a pathetic sound, a soft cry of ecstasy, and Mark’s forehead drops onto Jack’s shoulder as he chews his lip raw trying to stay even in his thrusts with the tingling congregating in his cock.

“Mark,” Jack whines, and Mark lifts his head. Jack’s pale body is shaking, flushed here and there with dark splotches of green, his wings fluttering against the bed and his tail curling in on itself repeatedly. With care Mark bends and plants a kiss on Jack’s nipple, then sucks the nub into his mouth and works his tongue against it while he speeds his hips up.

Jack’s back arches as he cries out, wings flailing before settling again. “Please, please, I’ll be okay, just go, please,” Jack moans, fingers alighting over Mark’s back like little footsteps and causing further sensation to add to the ones he’s already drowning in. “D-deeper—”

Mark groans and shivers on his next thrust in, going halfway now before pulling back. But Jack writhes beneath him, moving his hips up in little jerks and moaning for more. “Jack, I want to be careful,” he pants, bending and kissing Jack’s mouth as he whines. 

“It’s okay,” Jack murmurs breathlessly, bringing Mark’s face down again for more kisses when he goes to pull away. “It’s okay, I’m alright.”

With a harsh exhale against Jack’s cheek Mark dips his pelvis down and pushes in until his hips meet Jack’s body, feeling the wet silkiness of his body like a physical drug around his cock. He blinks when the pressure lessens and tightens again, clenching rhythmically, and it feels so good it’s making Mark see spots in his vision. 

“ _Yeah_ ,” Jack moans, loud and wanton, his head tossed back into Mark’s pillow. Mark bends and sucks a hickey onto his bared throat, rolling his hips slowly and making Jack’s back lift off the bed with each thrust. “Mark, oh, Ma—”

Hearing Jack say his name makes something let go inside him, and Mark’s planting his hands on either side of Jack’s head and thrusting down hard into Jack. The Ersti wails in pleasure, hands scrambling against Mark’s arms for something to hold onto as Mark’s hips reach a bruising, blazing pace, fucking Jack with reckless abandon. 

Jack doesn’t even get a word of warning out before he’s clenching around Mark and orgasming hard, gasping and moaning and wriggling beneath him. Mark feels extra slickness between Jack’s legs leaking out of him, as well as a small amount out of his cock. The liquid is tinted green and looks oddly appetizing against Jack’s skin, but Mark shoves the thought aside and drives hard for his own climax, not far off.

Jack clenches around him, hard, and Mark looks down at his face and sees stars around the edges of his vision, feels himself sweating through the tingling that's thumping through him like blood. He bends and kisses him and Jack holds him there with a hand around his neck. Fuzzy wings come up on either side of him, swaddling him into semi-darkness and flooding his body with a fizzling pang, and suddenly he’s coming with a heady moan, thrusting erratically as he empties himself into Jack.

His hips stop after a moment and he pulls out, looking down at the mess between them. “We should invest in some new sheets, I think,” he tells Jack wryly.

“Plastic ones, maybe,” Jack chuckles, and Mark smiles as he helps him up.

They shower together, somehow, in Mark’s small shower. Mark immensely enjoys the sounds he gets out of Jack when he washes his wings and tail, and especially between his legs, and Jack seems to enjoy himself when he explores Mark’s body too. They towel off and Mark finds Jack something else to wear that he can put holes in, since the old shirt didn’t make it.

“My family is goin’ to be unbearable now,” Jack muses as they walk back to his parents’ house, hand in hand. His tail is wound snugly around Mark’s wrist, his left wing draped over his broad shoulders. Mark’s tingling from head to toe, suffused in warm, loving comfort. “They’ll know we did it.”

“I guess the cat’s out of the bag,” Mark sighs, but then he smiles. “Could be worse. The slavers could’ve interrupted us, and then I would’ve been really peeved.”

Jack’s expression sobers and he looks Mark in the eye. “What are we goin’ to do about them? They’ll find you eventually.”

“I lay low for now,” Mark replies, brushing his thumb over Jack’s. “And we act carefully.”

The Ersti nods, and they’re silent until they reach Jack’s front door. Jack gives him a bracing look, his face becoming stern. “You ready to face them?”

Mark smiles and presses a kiss to Jack’s flat little nose, which twitches under his lips. “I’ve got you. I can face anything.”

“Don’t say that until this is over,” Jack laughs, and with a big breath he opens the front door.

*

Sunlight beats down on his bare back, warming him as he dozes with a hand in Jack’s hair. The Ersti is still asleep, put out by Mark’s gentle ministrations on his scalp after their second round of sex, and Mark is more than happy to study him until he wakes.

Some twenty minutes later Jack stirs, peeking one blue eye open to peer at Mark across the pillow. “You been watchin’ me sleep again?” he asks with a slow, sleepy inhale through his nose. 

“You don’t know how beautiful you are,” Mark replies, and he scoots forward to tenderly kiss a line up Jack’s jaw. “Just beautiful. I can’t stand it.”

“I can’t go again, so don’t even try,” Jack laughs when Mark climbs on top of him, nibbling on his neck. 

Mark grumbles discontentedly, but he smiles when Jack smooths a hand through his long hair. It’s long enough now that he can put it up with a clip or hair tie. “What time do you work?”

“Not until noon,” Jack murmurs, his fingers caressing over Mark’s ears which he is endlessly fascinated with, of all things. “How’s your job search been goin’?”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Mark says, pulling back to lie beside him. Jack gives him a curious look. “I was thinking, I can’t go back to what I was doing. I can’t. And there’s not a lot else left that I’m qualified for. But I can hack within an inch of perfection, and I was in military training until I dropped out two weeks before I completed the course when my dad died. I haven’t forgotten those skills.” 

He pauses, unsure of how Jack will take his next words. Jack’s expression is serious, fully attentive on him. “I was thinking, I still have my ship, which could easily be retrofitted to have a small cargo hold for multiple people instead of one-person living quarters. And, I have these skills, and I won’t do anything that’s the same as what I did before. But…” He sighs, looking up at the ceiling before back down at Jack. He breathes in to steel himself, then he says, “But I could do what I did for you. I could track down and save more people from slavers, from fates worse than death.” He swallows. “I could find others that will help, build a team of sorts.” He sighs, swallowing away the anxious swell of his throat. “I could save people, Jack.”

For a brief second Mark misreads the shock in Jack’s eyes for horror, sees the negativity that isn’t there, but then Jack is surging forward and clamping his hands around Mark’s face to kiss him breathless. When they break apart he’s grinning widely, fangs bared in joy. 

“ _We’ll_ save people,” Jack tells him, so brightly that Mark can feel it coursing through him from Jack’s touch. They kiss and it’s incandescent, beatific and pure but full of so much more than just happiness. Jack rolls him onto his back and smothers his face in little kisses and Mark knows that at every turn, even the hard ones, he made the right choices—the choices that led him here.


End file.
